Gorgeous Granada. NICARAGUA.

Travel tips for Granada, Nicaragua.

• There are plenty of hostels in the area, Oasis is good for all round travelers  two doors down is Amigos which is slightly cheaper and more chilled.
• Be wary of your stuff on the streets at night it can be a bit dodgy. Common sense.
• Head to the lake and there is a long strip of bars and restaurants which gets crowded at night with locals and also street performers.
• A must is Masaya market, catch a local bus from the small station (ask where in hotel). The market is huge and very local so no tourist tat!!
• If you want to visit Laguna de Apoyo (another must) you can catch a chicken bus to Masaya and then to the lagoon, you will have to walk a while though to get to the lake. The other option is to catch a taxi or the best which is what we did for $12 each is to go to Hostel Labrador and catch a lift there and back to a hotel on the lake where you can use the kayaks and tubes for free. Take food and your own booze as it is expensive to eat at the hotel. 

Beautiful Granada - Rum, lakes and vintage clothing

We hop on a chicken bus to get to Granada, these buses are the cheapest way to travel in Nicaragua and are old American school buses that are pimped up with colourful paint and messages praising god and Jesus. The bus drops us all off in the middle of the road and the driver tells us to wait for another going directly to Granada. Not wanting to wait we catch a Thai tuck tuck, 4 in each with all our bags stuffed in. 

There´s two tuck tucks and we race all the way to Granada, with Ben taking a turn at the wheel of the tuck tuck. Granada is one of Nicaragua's colonial cities that has kept its style in abundance, holding together the Spanish architecture and the Nicaraguan flair of the people. 

There´s a good group of us travelling together, we all met at Ometepe, so we book into a hostel and pretty much take over the place. We head off for a walk around and already we get a good feeling from the place  it certainly has a good atmosphere and whilst we get a hot dog to fill our empty stomachs a huge procession is going on outside, which seems to have every school involved. they certainly know how to take over a place!!

That night we enjoy a pizza in the main street, a bit touristy, but still a nice evening drinking some red and white wine whilst watching various street performers do their thing, including one amazing little kid who out of palm leaves weaves within minutes amazing objects such as flowers, crickets and people. A talented young man but still he should be in bed ready for school the next day. A reminder that the gorgeous exterior of Granada still has its problem with poverty.

The next day we decide to head to Masaya where there is a huge market, a local one not a touristy one. We head off on the chicken bus and arrive to a hectic and busy hell hole of a market place, rubbish and old food all over hundreds of people bustling everywhere whilst the buses horns and sellers screams attack the ears. I look at Jo and think this authentic and definitely what we wanted to see, let´s hope we can see some random stuff for sale.

All happy on the chicken bus

Again the whole group is here and as soon as we make our way into the market we come across an area selling second hand clothes, or as we call it in Leeds, Vintage Shops whereby they charge extra because its cool! Not here, racks and racks of cool clothes all for less than a dollar. Jo is now in heaven, forgetting about the group, and now only thinking of how she will fit all this into her already full rucksack. The lads decide to be stupid and we all start looking for Hawaiian shirts, a pact we say, we all need to wear one for the rest of the market. The stall owners looking at us as if we are crazy we all purchase ridiculous shirts which we proudly parade walking round the rest of the market. 

Ben sporting his new shirt and the girls all smilling

Vintage heaven for some hell for others!

Having spent an hour or so just in the clothes part of the market we decide to head off and see the rest. It certainly local as there are no other tourists, selling anything you can think of from machetes to fake converse all stars. We hit the meat section, always a shock to the eyes and nose, but its too late in the day and it is near empty but the smell still lingering! As we walk through we hit the hairdresser isle where a band is playing whilst the women hairdressers dance around their customers. Completely random but still hilarious.

The band with hairdresser in full swing

After our  mad shop at the market we head off by local bus to the beautiful Lake de Apoyo, where we planned to spend the rest of the afternoon chilling out in the water and topping up our tans. Not wanting to do a proper tour we get dropped off at the top of the valley where we get a glimpse of the lake. We begin to head down the forested path as it gets steeper and steeper and trickier. Twenty minutes in and we begin to realise that the walk would take us more than the expected 20 minutes but more like 2 hours, and with there not being much daylight left we decide to head back to the hostel and head to the lake the next day, to get the most of the full day.

Driving the chicken bus, with new shirt and shorts!!

We stock up on the Flor De Cana rum and some grub and we head off to the hostel to cook ourselves some dinner and show off our recent purchases at the market. Jo cooks a delicious Thai Green Curry and after dinner we swiftly tuck into the bottle of rum, a 2 liter bottle polished off in no less than an hour and we´re in bed!!

The next morning we decide to pay for the tour to get to the lake, 8 of us get crammed into a jeep and off we head, an hour later we arrive at a very snazzy hotel which is situated right on the shore of the lake. We´re all glad as we decided to get the tour as the walk would have been pretty horrendous as the jeep struggled at some points with the steep slopes!!

All crammed into the Jeep

We don our bathing suits, purchase the beer and head for the beach where we have free access to kayaks and tubes to float about in the glorious lake surrounded by huge mountains. This is the life we all say to each other!

Jo enjoying a beer 

Me and Ben

Jumping Jo

Louise, march and Jo

Wide angle view of the lake

My turn to jump

The whole gang

The view of the lake from above 

After our day at the lake we headed to the local supermarket to stock up on a feast for the evening, fajitas mexican style and our liquid as per usual Flor de Cana rum!!

The next morning we all wake up with slight hangovers and we say our goodbyes as me and Jo head for another Chicken bus to take us further north in Nicaragua to Leon.